Plat Book 8, page 28, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.
Sisters Jennie Parker Kerbo and Magdalena Parker Huntley jointly owned two lots stretching between Ash and Narroway Streets. The lots now correspond to 104 Ash Street and 107 Narroway.
We saw here that a half-dozen or more African-American Odd Fellows lodges were scattered around Wilson County in the early 1900s. Two were in the town of Wilson — Mount Hebron, whose lodge was in the 500 block of East Nash, and Zion Hall, which was in the Grabneck community. Others were in unclear locations in or near Stantonsburg, Black Creek, and Lucama, and three were at locations completely unknown.
I stumbled on a clue today.
While running down a loose end related to Saint Delight Original Free Will Baptist church, at (2), my cursor paused on the square outlined in blue, at (1). I glanced at the owner of this lot. Odd Fellows Society?!? And with the same generic Bishop L.N. Forbes Street address as the Lane Street Project’s Odd Fellows Cemetery. Per the tax record for this parcel, this is a cemetery. [The parcels marked (4) are also cemeteries — Saint Delight’s original cemetery and an expansion lot acquired in 1993. I believe (3) is the lot on which Kirby’s Crossing School once stood.]
Which Odd Fellows lodge was this? And large enough to establish its own cemetery? Wow!
A plat map showing a division of property for the Lucian Kirby heirs, filed in 1992, answers the question. Here’s a detail:
Plat Book 22, page 220, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.
The key identifies the owner of (3) as Lucama Odd Fellows Grand United Order No. 3501. (This may be a typo, as other documents record the lodge number as 3561.)
I don’t have access to Deed Book 51 online, but I’ll run to the courthouse for it next time I’m in Wilson. (The Bishop L.N. Forbes mailing address for recent tax records for this property is clearly a recent clerical add-in. It’s erroneous, and serves no purpose other than to cloud the picture. The address is insufficient for mail delivery; there is no mailbox; and, in any event, both cemeteries are tax-exempt.) I’ll also need to take another look at the cemetery, which I assumed belonged to the church when I photographed it in September 2017.
Here’s a clue I missed:
James A. Kirby‘s fallen headstone shows the Odd Fellows’ linked chain symbol, marked F-L-T. Lucama Lodge was chartered in 1892, and Kirby may have been among the original members.
If Lane Street Project had an inspo board, these images would be tacked across the top.
I drove over to Athens yesterday to listen to UGA students talk about their semester’s work storymapping the families of historic Brooklyn Cemetery.
Linda Davis founded Friends of Brooklyn Cemetery in 2006. She’s part of the descendant community, and I look forward to speaking with her soon and tapping into her wisdom and wealth of experience.
I tried to visit the cemetery before the talk started, but it’s accessed from the parking lot of a church, and I didn’t know where the gates were or what the rules were around visitation. There are several cemeteries I want to visit in the Athens area, so I’ll see it next trip.
I sat on the front row near the students, and I overheard several of them mention “my family.” I was briefly thrown as all but two of a dozen or so were white (just one is Black), and Brooklyn is an African-American cemetery. As they presented, however, it became clear that the students identify very closely with the particular families they were assigned to research.
Each StoryMap used the same design layout. For each family, researchers included an introduction, a family tree, a map tour of the gravesites, a timeline and map tour of addresses significant to the family’s history, and a spotlight on one family member.
For example:
Project members acknowledged some of the limitations of their research.
(And a nod to Lyndon House Arts Center, which hosts sponsor Historic Athens’ monthly programming.)
Odd Fellows, Vick, and Rountree Cemeteries don’t have a major research university in their backyard, but East Carolina and North Carolina State Universities aren’t far away. Odd Fellows is perfect for this kind of storymapping project, and I am exploring ways to make it happen. (Including maybe taking an intro GIS course myself.)
See more of Community Mapping Lab’s work in and around Athens, including the Brooklyn Cemetery, here.
Heading over to Athens to learn more about Brooklyn Cemetery and its partnership with University of Georgia’s Community Mapping Lab!
Ben Mincey and the Red Hots responded to big fires all over the city, but their primary responsibility was for East Wilson. The 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map shows all the fire alarms set up thoroughout the district.
Note the clusters in sections 17, 26, and 28 on the sites of industrial complexes. Also note the relative rarity of alarms on residential streets east of the tracks. If a house caught fire on, say, the corner of Carolina and Reid, some hard running was required to raise the alarm.
A close-up showing the alarm, marked F.A., at the junction of East Green and Elba Streets.
Preservation Society of Charleston has joined forces with the College of Charleston’s Avery Research Center for African American History and Culture to digitally map historic African-American cemeteries in Charleston, South Carolina.
Per Avery Center’s Instagram page: “The Humane and Friendly Society was established by free Blacks in Charleston, South Carolina in 1802 to support sick individuals and to aid their families; to provide a place for burial, and to help widows. In addition, they sometimes arranged for apprenticeships for African American males and paid for the education of orphaned children. The society also promoted a sense of community, yet some found the society and others like it to be elitist since one had to pay dues to be a member. The organization was one of nine burial and fraternal societies such as Brown Fellowship Society (1790); and preceded the Friendly Union Society (1913); Brotherly Association (1852); Monrovia Society (1856); Unity and Friendship Society (1871); Reserve Fellowship (1874); Lewis Christian Society; and Racker Hill Cemetery (aka Bright Light) (1890s). Other names for these organizations include bury leagues, mutual benefit societies, fraternal orders, and burial associations.”
I dream of this kind of partnership — and mapping — for Odd Fellows Cemetery. In the meantime, I look forward to following and learning from this partnership.
I’ve written about the removal of graves from “Jones-Hill-Coleman” Cemetery in 1995. I was puzzled by the name of the cemetery, its unclear location, and the location of the “Eva Coleman Cemetery” to which some of the burials were reinterred.
Jones-Hill-Coleman Cemetery is clearly the cemetery more commonly called Jones Hill. The removal of graves certificate filed in October 1995 identified 11 graves to be removed to “the new Coleman” cemetery and ten to be moved to Rest Haven Cemetery because of “road construction.” An attached map, labeled “Jones-Hill-Coleman Cemetery,” shows an orderly six-row graveyard adjacent to Old Raleigh Road. I was thrown initially because this sketch bears little resemblance to Jones Hill in its current state. Also, while 44 graves in Jones Hill have been identified, the graves on this map mostly were labeled “adult,” “baby,” or “no one found.” I assumed, in error I now see, that this meant the graves were unidentified, which puzzled me because Jones Hill contains dozens of headstones. Last, though the map is marked not to scale, the graves seemed awfully close to the road compared to the front edge of Jones Hill now.
I’m still a little confused, but with further study, I have a somewhat better understanding. A road construction project required the removal of graves from the right-of-way buffering Old Raleigh Road.
Wilson Daily Times, 25 July 1995.
The burials in the public right-of-way primarily were descendants of Henry and Mary Jane Thompson Coleman, who had owned a 68-acre tract of land just north of the cemetery.
In 1990, that tract was divided among Henry Coleman’s heirs. Daughter Eva Coleman, now deceased, received tracts 2 and 3, containing 13.7 acres, at bottom right. See Wilson County deed book 1410, page 341.
Plat book 21, page 150, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson.
Google Maps aerial view of the area with a dotted line marking the lower boundary of the Coleman tracts and (A) at Jones Hill Cemetery.
Detail of 2013 plat map showing Jones Hill Cemetery, bottom left above “Old,” and the bottom edge of the Coleman tracts. Plat book 39, page 184.
Per the map attached to the removal of graves certificate, ten identified remains — mostly Joneses and Edmundsons — were moved to Rest Haven Cemetery in Wilson.
John Thomas Edmundson’s relocated grave in Rest Haven, courtesy of findagrave.com.
The other eleven graves — all but two unidentified — were moved to a new cemetery created on Eva Coleman’s land at a location described on a map of the cemetery attached to the certificate as:
The graves are not recorded at Findagrave.com. A zoomed-in perusal of the Eva Coleman tract on Google Maps reveals an area with housing and outbuildings surrounded by plowed fields. At the bottom corner of the tract, however, this clear area appears:
Though its location does not square easily with the description above, this would seem to be the Eva Coleman Cemetery. Can any family members confirm?
The edges of Wilson’s downtown warehouse and industrial district were once shot through with tiny alleys lined with duplexes built to house workers and their families. Most that remain have been paved and renamed as “Lane.” In what was once the mill village of Wilson Cotton Mills, however, a couple of dirt tracks remain as Cedar Street and Holly Street. These houses, which have been converted to single-family, were occupied by white families only, but offer a glimpse of what would have been a familiar streetscape to African-Americans living in similar alleys nearby.
Cedar Street, formerly Factory Alley.
Holly Street, formerly Jones Street Alley.
Detail from 1922 Sanborn fire insurance map of Wilson. South Factory Street is now Layton Avenue. Lodge Street Alley (Warehouse Alley) is now Wayne Street. At (A), the house visible above on Cedar Street/Factory Alley. At (B), the house on Holly Street/Jones Street Alley.
Photos by Lisa Y. Henderson, March 2025.
In March 1934, Mechanics and Farmers Bank filed a plat of eight lots for it owned on Moore Street between Contentnea [now Cemetery] Street and Suggs Street. (Samuel H. Vick owned bordering property to the rear, and Daniel C. Suggs the corner lot at Contentnea.) Lot 3 included a 20 foot by 40 foot frame building — a church.
Plat Book 4, page 85, Wilson County Register of Deeds Office, Wilson, N.C.
The church appears in the 1930 Sanborn fire insurance maps of Wilson, but not in 1922, providing a rough date for its erection. The records currently available to me roughly sketch its early history. Holy Temple Church’s trustees — Josh Neal, Lee M. Hinnant, Mitchell Hinnant, Nero Oliver, Isiah Israel, and Dock Cooper — bought the building from the bank in April 1934, and the church held it until 1982, when it sold this and a Cemetery Street tract to Whole Truth Church of the Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith.
Wilson Daily Times, 22 June 1946.
In 2013, Whole Truth sold the building, which has been bricked and otherwise modernized, to Mission of Faith Free Will Baptist Church.
——
In the 1920 census of Wilson, Wilson County: on Mercer Street, Josh Neal, 39; wife Pearlie, 36; and children Easley, 18, Joshua, 17, Mary, 15, Willie, 10, Louisa, 8, Jessie, 5, Mattie, 4, Charlie, 1, and Essie, 3.
In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: at 705 Stantonsburg Street, A.C.L. Railroad flagman Nero Oliver, 32, born in South Carolina; wife Annie, 23; and adopted daughter Bessie M., newborn.
In the 1930 census of Wilson, Wilson County: tobacco factory laborer Dock Cooper, 29; wife Jennet, 27; relative Ammie, 37, Standard Oil Company plumber; and roomer Ora Bradshaw, 13.
I went down a whole rabbit hole today at North Carolina State Historic Preservation Office’s HPOWEB 2.0 GIS mapping tool. Inching my cursor across Wilson County, I found locations (or approximate locations) for several Rosenwald schools I’ve only been able to guess at.
This location, labeled “approximate,” places Barnes School a little further south on Airport Boulevard than my guesstimate.
As identified by former students and confirmed by deed, Barnes School was here:
As I’d believed, the original two-teacher Williamson School was on the premises of Williamson High School, built in 1941. [Update: this is incorrect. Williamson School was on present-day Willing Worker Road.]
Confirmation that Lucama School was adjacent to First Baptist Church of Lucama.
Earlier sources indicated two possible sites for Kirby. The information below places the school adjacent to Saint Delight Free Will Baptist.
The pin dropped to mark Saint Delight is misplaced below. The church actually is further north, visible at the right edge of the oval I added to represent the approximate location of Kirby’s School.
[UPDATE: actually, the school was on the other side of the church in a area now wooded.]
I only knew Ferrell’s was somewhere near Black Creek. In fact, it was a couple of miles southwest, on Perry Road, which runs roughly parallel to present-day I-795 and US 117.
I knew Evansdale School was on or near the railroad south of the crossroads that marked Evansdale community proper. This information places it on the far side of the tracks paralleling Graves Road, about halfway toward Grimsley Store Road. The school’s lot description mentions a “corner of Church lot,” which was likely Jackson Chapel A.M.E. Zion Church.
I had assumed that Jones Hill School was adjacent to Jones Hill Primitive Baptist Church, but, per this information, it was located a little further west on Old Raleigh Road. In fact, it “stood in what is now [right-of-way]; Old Raleigh Rd. was moved slightly to the N[orth.]”
Aerial images via Google Maps.